‘Why I am trying to be still, Mary, so as not to wake you up, and it seems to me as if everything was possessed to tumble down so. But it is only half-past three, so you turn over and go to sleep.’
‘But, Miss Prissy,’ said Mary, sitting up in bed, ‘you are all dressed; where are you going?’
‘Well, to tell the truth, Mary, I am just one of those people that can’t sleep when they have got responsibility on their minds; and I’ve been lying awake more than an hour here, thinking about that quilt. There is a new way of getting it on to the frame that I want to try, ’cause you know when we quilted Cerinthy Stebbins’ it would trouble us in the rolling; and I have got a new way that I want to try, and I mean just to get it into the frame before breakfast. I was in hopes I should get out without waking any of you; and now I don’t know as I shall get by your mother’s door without waking her (’cause I know she works hard, and needs her rest); but that bedroom door squawks like a cat—enough to raise the dead!
‘Mary,’ she added, with sudden energy, ‘if I had the least drop of oil in a teacup, and a bit of quill, I’d stop that door making such a noise.’ And Miss Prissy’s eyes glowed with resolution.
‘I don’t know where you could find any at this time,’ said Mary.
‘Well, never mind, I’ll just go and open the door as slow and careful as I can,’ said Miss Prissy, as she trotted out of the apartment.
The result of her carefulness was very soon announced to Mary by a protracted sound resembling the mewing of a hoarse cat, accompanied with sundry audible grunts from Miss Prissy, terminating in a grand finale of clatter, occasioned by her knocking down all the pieces of the quilt-frame that stood in a corner of the room, with a concussion that roused everybody in the house.
‘What is that?’ called out Mrs. Scudder from her bedroom.
She was answered by two streams of laughter; one from Mary, sitting up in bed, and the other from Miss Prissy, holding her sides, as she sat dissolved in merriment on the sanded floor.